Color management is extremely important to many retail industries where sales are often related to the ability of a retailer to offer products in colors that are currently popular. Taking the textile/apparel industry as an example, the popularity of certain colors waxes and wanes seasonally, requiring the retailer to be ever vigilant regarding the color of the products that they offer for sale. Manufacturers, distributors and retailers that offer their own branded products, are continually seeking methods and apparatus to ensure consistency of color in the products that they offer for sale. This starts with the colorants, including pigments and dyes, that are used to color, e.g. dye, the material used in their products. Many manufacturers and retailers are faced with the further task of ensuring color-coordination of products on different materials, such as different fabrics, ceramics, plastics, etc. Compounding the difficulties of such a task, products from different sources have a tendency to behave differently as viewing conditions change, such as, natural daylight versus artificial lighting, or viewing angle. Given that a fairly typical retailer in, for example, the textile/apparel industry, may purchase the same textile/apparel products from ten different vendors in six different countries on three different continents, the time and resources spent on color management becomes significant.
Continuing with our example the textile industry, when purchasing textile products for resale, a provider of textile products, such as a retailer, designer, manufacturer, or distributor (hereinafter simply retailer), creates a specification that may, for example, include: a pattern; a fabric; and a color. The specification is submitted to a textile vendor, such as a cut and sew shop; a fabric mill; a dye house; or some combination thereof. A fundamental step in setting up a manufacturing process for the goods described by the specification is to determine a recipe that will produce the desired color. Typically, a dye house is responsible for matching the color of the fabric requested by the retailer and dyeing the fabric for subsequent assembly of the textile product. To do this, the dye house may use internal resources or consult external resources, such as a colorant manufacturer. Often, the match is not perfect, but instead is an approximation with colorants available to the professional performing the match. A sample produced using the color match is typically passed back to the retailer for approval of the color match.
The end result of the color matching process is a recommended colorant specification typically including a dyestuff formula and a recommended dyeing process. The dyestuff formula is the specific colorants and the blend ratio necessary to obtain, for example, a specific color shade and a specific fastness on a particular substrate. The recommended colorant specification is typically obtained by generating a list of possible formulas, either manually or automatically, which are individually reviewed by a dyeing professional. The dyeing professional selects a single formula based on the needs of the retailer balancing such factors as cost versus fastness and color consistency in different light sources.
Color selection is a time consuming process that has heretofore required a highly experienced dyeing professional to produce acceptable results. As noted above, some automated systems for color matching have been offered. While such systems automate the creation of recipes, they are not currently able to identify a best match. Rather, known commercial system offer a sorted list of possible recipes that must be reviewed by a dyeing professional.
FIG. 1 is a flowchart of a known method for automatically generating a list of possible color matches. The method starts in step 100. In step 102, reflectance data of a desired color is obtained, typically using a spectrophotometer. Next in step 104 an operator selects a set of colorants suitable for the material being dyed. The operator can limit the number of colorants, based on his or her experience, to those most likely to produce a good match. In step 106, the operator identifies certain conditions, to be used in sorting the output.
Typically, the operator will identify a light source, a type of material and a dyeing process.
In step 108, the system automatically calculates and matches recipes. Typically, such calculation is performed by generating a list of all possible colorant combinations and iteratively modeling the reflectance characteristics of a color produced by the colorants at various concentrations. Modeling reflectance characteristics is well known. For example one method of performing such modeling is described in Colour Physics for Industry, 1987 Society of Dyers and Colourists, Edited by Roderick McDonald. One example of a product capable of performing such modeling is the MATCHWIZARD software available from CLARIANT Corporation.
Thereafter, in step 110, all of the matching recipes are sorted based on the conditions entered in step 106. Next, in step 112, the system outputs all of the matching recipes in matching order. The automated method ends in step 114. The real work now begins. A dyeing professional must be engaged to review the output of the automated method and select a single best colorant recipe that meets expectations.
A dyeing professional may be called on to provide a hundred or more colorant formulas at a time for a single retailer. In the past, this has required weeks of effort analyzing each recipe, selecting a best recipe and preparing a detailed report. With a trend toward color coordination in almost every consumer product, the amount of time and resources being devoted to selecting colorant recipes is becoming significant and is outpacing the availability of dyeing professionals.
For example consider the automotive industry. It is not uncommon for an automaker to want to coordinate matching colors in the interior of an automobile. This requires matching color across a variety of materials, including: plastic, leather, metal, and fabric. Given that each type of material requires different types of colorants, and different dyeing processes, such matching has, in the part, required and extraordinary amount of effort on the parts of designers and color/dyeing professionals.
Yet another example is the athletic shoe industry. The current style in sneakers includes a mix of a variety of different materials, each of which must be dyed so as to match the other materials. It is possible that any given sneaker will contain several, if not all, of the following materials: cotton, polyester, nylon, leather, rubber, metal and plastic. Further, it is not uncommon for other types of products, such as clothing, bags and watches, to be promotionally tied with a sneaker line, presenting additional materials which require dyeing to a predetermined color.
Co-pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/883,647, entitled A PROCESS FOR COLOR MANAGEMENT, incorporated herein by reference, describes the use of an engineered color standard (ECS) by a retailer for controlling a color quality across multiple suppliers. The ECS is created by an ECS provider, such as a dye manufacturer, using color matching software and a profile that identifies “acceptable tradeoffs,” e.g., cost versus fastness, color versus light source. Currently, the ECS is created by an experienced dyeing professional selecting the appropriate colorant specification as described above.
The present invention provides improved methods and apparatus that automates much of the selection of a recommended color recipe.